Visibility Day helps promote religious identity

Seeing is learning: Rifat Mamun '10, left, and Shazia Baig '09 display their Visibility Day shirts.

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Enlarge Seeing is learning: Rifat Mamun '10, left, and Shazia Baig '09 display their Visibility Day shirts.

There are enough people sporting green T-shirts on the Union College campus today that it seems like spring again (well, almost). In fact, the sage-colored shirts are worn for a different reason: They are part of Visibility Day.

The shirts feature the official “coexist” emblem, which spells the word using symbols from various faiths, and they also include a personal statement from the wearer.

“The goal is to show all the religious and spiritual diversity around campus,” said Ariel Sincoff-Yedid ’09, chair of Union’s Multi-Faith Council.

“We spray-painted the 'coexist' symbol on the back of the T-shirts to give them a unifying symbol. And then, on the front, we asked everyone to write their own religious or spiritual identification. I saw one that said, ‘I’m an Islamic Christian’ because the woman wearing it had been raised in both traditions.”

Sincoff-Yedid estimated that 120 students, faculty members and administrators are wearing the T-shirts.

Visibility Day concludes this evening at Breazzano House, where participants talk about what it means to be an individual within a religious or spiritual community, and a community at large.